The last few days, I’ve experienced what appears to be a new cheating technique on PlayChess.com. What happens is my time seems to simply evaporate and I lose on time the instant my opponent moves. These are rated games. The last occurrence, with a huge material advantage on the board, I had about 25 seconds left and had a “premove” set up. My opponent thought for about 30 seconds, moved, and bingo, I instantly lost on time. This has happened more than once. The first couple of times (with different opponents), I thought I’d simply zoned out and not noticed my opponent’s move. But this last time, I was clearly focused and paying attention.
Anybody else experience this or something similar?
By the way, my premove did execute on the board, so I technically lost on time when it was my opponent’s move!
This kind of thing is frequently caused by lag. If you have a slow connection to the server your moves (and the replies of your opponent) will not be transmitted right away but meanwhile the server is still counting down your clock. This can result in the sudden disappearance of time as you have described.
In the past, the server seemed to be able to account for lag. I’m wondering if some other applications I’m running on my PC might screw this up. I had Skype up, as well as gDrive, couple of browser windows and the usual antivirus.
I don’t think it’s related to other applications. I have had the exact thing you describe happen to me - I try to move instantly but 30 seconds or a minute just vanish. I have had this happen on both ICC and Chess.com. Some servers have an internal test for lag and won’t let you start a game if your connection is too slow but I don’t think it always works.
I get broadband internet from Comcast and there’s a tendency to think it’s very fast. However, when overall usage is very high (for example, in late afternoon when all the kids are getting home from school and simultaneously logging on), I have sometimes found my connection slowing to a crawl. It’s not just the chess servers, web pages take forever to load too. All I can do is just log off and come back later. Sometimes, if I try logging in instead using an alternate ISP (I have a wireless laptop card from Verizon), the problem vanishes.
I have had the same problem numerous times on chess.com. At first I thought that somehow my opponents were manipulating the clock later when it occurred many times I concluded that it simply must be a lag problem. Its funny though it only seems to occur (at least in my minds eye) when I have a won position and lots of extra time-LOL internet chess can be really frustrating at times
Well, having lost several more games via this artifact (and, for all I know, maybe won a couple), I think I’m about done with PlayChess until it’s fixed. Maybe wait a week or so before playing any more. It’s a new kind of frustration, waiting for your opponent to move, not knowing whether it’s your clock running or his. It really screws up one’s concentration.
The only time I play chess on the internet is when I have had a few glasses of wine and simply want to relax and have fun-you can not play serious chess on these sites as the glitches will drive you crazy
When playing over the board you should wait until your opponent has moved before you move and it isn’t your move until the opponent has pressed the clock.
So moving when it is your opponent’s move it cheating and should be stopped at all costs. It is totally unforgiveable and…
Excuse me, what did you say?
The blitz rule is that a legal move is completed once it is determined and you can then move as long as you still allow your opponent to hit the clock?
Well (channelling Gilda Radner channeling Emily Litella) … Never mind.
The premove in online blitz is roughly the same as an unconditional “if” move in postal chess – an ancient and honorable facet of that form of the game. Their use involves both risk and reward.
I was being polite in response to Jion_Wansu’s original claim, which was essentially nonsense. First, premoves are defined in the unique set of online rules established by Chessbase, who operate PlayChess. By signing on and playing there, one accepts those rules.
Now, it might be mildly unsporting to use premoves if (a) one’s opponent has some technical limitation precluding premoves and (b) if one is aware of this, but it still wouldn’t be cheating, and one would naturally wonder why an opponent would play in an environment subjecting her to such a handicap.
If an opponent just doesn’t LIKE premoves and wishes I wouldn’t use them? Well, uh, tough bananas.
I’ve experienced the same problem on Chess.com. I’ve pretty much quit playing on it due to various glitches. I just play for fun, but it’s not much fun when things like that happen.
Network lag is a problem anywhere online. Have you ever had your favorite website take longer than usual to load? Those of us with thousands of online blitz games can certainly relate to the lag monster.
Lag is a function of the speed of your connection to the network, and all of the routers between your ISP and the server. For example, players on wireless may get dropped every now and then. Even if you’re wired to a fancy digital line, your signal may still hop through a dozen routers until it reaches the chess server (PlayChess in Germany, ICC in New Jersey and Chess.com in California).
Fortunately for most of us in the USA, lag is only a short term issue. The ping time from one end of the country to the other is about 100 ms on major networks. Sometimes a router goes down and it takes a while for the network to find a detour around it. Check a traceroute if you’re curious why the connection died or is very slow.
I’ve been told by people who manage Internet hubs for a living that 99% of the time any slowdown is at the connection between the user and his ISP or between the final ISP and the website host, in other words in the first or last hop.
They also tell me that traceroute times aren’t always helpful for spotting the backlog, because traceroute uses a different packet type than what is generally used for sending data.
